Mount Pleasant Hospital vs Christus St Vincent Regional Medical Center

Mount Pleasant Hospital is in South Carolina; Christus St Vincent Regional Medical Center is in New Mexico. Cross-state comparisons need to account for the Medicare wage-index adjustment, which can move payments by 30% between high-cost-of-living states and low-cost-of-living ones, before any hospital-specific factors enter. Average payments are close: $10,619 vs $11,550, only 8% apart. With cost close to tied, the quality measures do most of the work in the value-rubric comparison. Mount Pleasant Hospital comes out slightly ahead.

With costs this close, the choice between these two hospitals turns on the quality measure set, geographic convenience, or insurance-network status rather than payment-per-procedure differences.